ARTIST: The Freelance Hellraiser
TITLE: Waiting For Clearance
LABEL: Ugly Truth / Sony BMG
GENRE: Indie
BITRATE: 214kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 46min total
RELEASE DATE: 06-26-2006
RIP DATE: 2006-05-23
Track List
----------
01. Waiting For Clearance 5:30
02. Send Me 4:13
03. You Can Cry All You Want 3:48
04. Cant Hide 3:31
05. We Dont Belong 3:17
06. The Sweetest Noise 5:58
07. Waves 3:54
08. All I Want 3:53
09. Weightlessness 4:03
10. Want You To Know 3:34
11. Something You Do To Me 4:20
Release Notes:
Sometimes it takes just one brilliant idea to change your life. In October 2001, Roy
Kerr, aka The Freelance Hellraiser, spliced Hard To Explain by the Strokes with
Christina Aguilera's Genie In A Bottle and christened it A Stroke Of Genius.
Available as just 500 7" singles but countless downloads, it helped start a
revolution in music. Along with fellow mashup pioneers 2 Many DJs, Richard X and
Trash's Erol Alkan, Roy brought songs back to the heart of dance music, and a
playful glitterball strut back to rock.
A Stroke Of Genius proved that glossy R&B and choppy New York punk weren't that far
apart: it was all just pop music. The reverberations spread out in all directions:
to Danger Mouse's celebrated Beatles/Jay-Z bootleg The Gray Album, to Sugababes'
number one smash Freak Like Me, to the club-savvy disco-punk of Franz Ferdinand, to
the brash, clever pop of Rachel Stevens and Girls Aloud, and to countless bedroom
enthusiasts trying mashups for themselves. The song attracted admiring coverage
everywhere from Mixmag and Muzik to the New York Times and Time magazine to books by
Paul Morley and Nick Hornby, plus a cease-and-desist order from Christina Aguilera's
publishers, which Roy proudly pinned to his wall. Recently, Blender magazine in the
US voted it #78 in their list of the best records of the last 25 years: one place
ahead of REM's Losing My Religion.
But with his debut album finally completed, it's time to shake off the label of Mr
Mashup. "Until three weeks ago even my old man didn't realise that I was doing and
album that I'd written," he says with a grin. "He thought it was remixes. I want to
show people that I'm not just about putting two songs together to make another one -
that all along there was a desire to make a proper album."
It's not as if he's been resting on his laurels. In the past four years, he's
produced a string of remixes (Christina Aguilera, Placebo, Editors) and played
memorable DJ sets at the Big Beat Boutique, Death Disko, Def Jam's MTV Awards party
and the Glastonbury festival. In 2004 he became Sir Paul McCartney's official tour DJ:
the first person ever given the chance to remix Macca's back catalogue.
Waiting For Clearance is the sum of all these experiences: an album steeped in dance,
rock, pop and soul, and intoxicated by all the different, dazzling ways in which they
intersect. Vocals are supplied by Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody (a mate since
university) plus former Snow Patrol guitarist Iain Archer and Roy's wife, Lalula.
Helping out on production, meanwhile, are U2 producer Jacknife Lee (another old
friend), Freeform Five's Anu Pillai, synth elder statesman Jan Hammer, and Hugo
Nicolson, the man who co-produced Primal Scream's legendary Screamadelica.
"At the back of mind Screamadelica was my template," Roy admits. "It's got the dubby
stuff, the house stuff, the rock'n'roll stuff... I always wanted my album to have a
coherent flow. I wanted it to have the feel of a band."
It has, admittedly, been a long time coming. Roy started work six years ago on a
collaboration with Gary Lightbody. Then Snow Patrol got a major record deal and Roy
put out A Stroke of Genius and that was the end of that. Since then, Roy's gone from
being a postman who made music in his spare time to touring the globe with the most
famous man in rock, and that journey from the mundane to the miraculous is what the
album is all about.
Roy was born in Billericay, Essex 32 years ago and swears that his earliest musical
memory is learning to play Kraftwerk's Autobahn on the piano. At school he was a
synth-pop kid. At university in Dundee he discovered hip-hop, soul and funk and began
hosting club nights.
After university, he got a job at the Royal Mail, just to tide him over. By the end of
the '90s he was still there. "My other mates were all living exciting lives in music
and the media and I was a postman. I was standing there dreaming the whole time - what
the fuck am I doing?"
Tired of meeting people who reacted to his job with blank expressions, and inspired by
Oliver Reed putting "Hellraiser" in the occupation section of his passport, he
pretended to a girl in a bar one night that he was a freelance hellraiser, hired by
the tabloids to start fights with celebrities. He invited her along to watch him "twat
Hucknall outside the Met Bar". She politely declined.
With his new alias came new focus. His first piece of music was a remix of Snow
Patrol's intriguingly titled Get Balsamic Vinegar... Quick You Fool in 2000. Then came
A Stroke Of Genius and the career he always wanted. After three years of DJing and
remixing (as well as his debut single, the original version of Want You To Know), he
produced an audition mix for Paul McCartney and got the job. He DJed on McCartney's
2004 European tour, which climaxed with an unforgettable headlining set at
Glastonbury, and again on 2005's US odyssey: a surreal experience. "Audiences have
been good to me. I'm up there playing this odd club music and in middle America you
know they're just being polite."
The tour spawned the Twin Freaks album, on which Roy played thrilling havoc with a
dozen of McCartney's songs. "I'd been working up to saying we should do an album but I
didn't know the right way to approach it. Then I DJed at his birthday party in Russia,
got absolutely hammered on vodka, got him in a bearhug and said 'We've got to do a
fucking album! It'll be wicked!'"
In between Macca duties, Roy's been working on Waiting For Clearance in his attic
studio in north London. It's not your typical producer's album: heavy on technical
know-how but light on lyrical substance. Inspired by the years it took Roy to get to
this point, it's about taking risks, escaping the humdrum and making life more
colourful.
"The lyrics are all about taking that leap," Roy explains. "There were a lot of people
saying this isn't going to work out - take the safe option. And it's all about
breaking free from that and doing what you want to do rather than what you feel you
should be doing."
Like we said at the beginning: not just Mr Mashup.